Our account of Primeston has always said the King family’s polled herd was built on cattle from Lewis W. Thieman’s Thieman Polled Shorthorns in Concordia, Missouri. A pair of old American sale catalogues, now held by the US National Agricultural Library, put some flesh on that story.
Thieman’s big polled Shorthorn sale on 23 November 1957 offered a son of TPS Max Commander 8th, a dark roan bull the catalogue describes as the one sold to King Brothers in South Africa, for $4,000. The same sale had a dark roan bull calf named TPS Primeston Coronet, calved on 25 October 1956, sired by the bull “now owned by King Bros. of South Africa”. You do not name a calf Primeston by accident!
When Thieman’s celebrated their 75th anniversary sale in November 1975, their catalogue still remembered the King Bros. export, and noted that several Thieman females had also gone to South Africa.
Our family records date the polled herd from 1938, which is also the year Harold Thieman joined his father as a partner. The catalogues we have found so far document the King Bros. purchases in the 1950s. If anyone has older records, we would love to see them.
Source: Thieman’s 75th anniversary sale catalogue, 1 November 1975